


Grown from Dead Things

by jollywriter



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Combat Violence, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Hand to Hand Combat, Hate fucking, Makeup Sex, hurt comfort, rage to redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jollywriter/pseuds/jollywriter
Summary: Ellie's fought across the country to confront Abby, finally. When circumstances intervene, she finds herself at crossed purposes. She sees Joel in her, sees her devotion to Lev, and can't bring herself to finish the revenge Ellie burned down the world to finish. When they're wounded in a fight trying to escape, Ellie makes a new choice, and she doesn't know where it will take her.
Relationships: Abby/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 80





	Grown from Dead Things

**Author's Note:**

> So. I expected this to be a very short one-shot. It was not. It's going to have chapters. The premise is; Ellie tries to kill Abby, things happen on the beach, and she makes a different call, instead. And the ramifications that come with that. It was inspired by a single piece of artwork that turned my opinion almost completely on the story. To that end, this story is NOT compliant with canon. Ellie keeps her fingers, she doesn't part with Abby. at least not yet. We're in uncharted territory, folks, and I don't know where we're going.  
> Here's the setup chapter. There's a lot of brutal violence. There will eventually be reconciliation. And sex. Not in this first chapter, though.  
> As the story evolves and I know what the heck is gonna happen next, I will update the header notes accordingly.  
> Thank you for reading <3 I hope you enjoy this.

Ellie limped down the stairs. Behind her, throughout the hacienda, people screamed, gunfire rattled and echoed through the house, windows smashed and fire burned. A black night turned murky gray as she made her way past overgrown hedges towards the broken-down steps that led to the beach. 

The beach. It was a destination she felt with every labored beat of her heart. She held the MP5 low, rested her forearm against her side. The stitches had pulled, in the ordeal that’d come after.  
Escaping had cost her, physically. 

She limped down the stairs. Mist swirled at ankle level, driven in by a slow wind off the coast. She lifted the gun a little. 

She made her way slowly down the path. The gunfire continued to rage behind her, people cried out as they were shot or bitten, but it didn’t reach here. The further she got from the big house, the less that fight mattered. 

And then she saw it. 

A murky moon hung behind thin, oily clouds, and cast gray light on flat sand. Driven into the sand were halved telephone poles. Hung from those splintery poles, were people.  
Some were clearly dead. Limbs were detached, blood had long dried on the old, cracked wood, hands slipped in shackles, skin picked away.  
There were no clean bones on this beach. All that was here, was savagery. 

Ellie made her way slowly between the poles. She had a single target, one reason for being here. One reason to still be alive. 

It didn’t take long. The further down the beach she went, the newer the bodies, and the still-living, were. 

And then she found her. 

The braid was gone. Her clothes were torn and ratty. Her skin was red and flaking from the days of exposure in the sun. Some of the muscle was gone. She just hung there, by her wrists, crucified. 

Abby. Joel’s butcher. 

Ellie turned; directly across from her target was Lev. He was too skinny, just as burned. 

Ellie found herself moving on autopilot. She limped behind the pole, took her old knife, and cut the rope. 

Abby fell to the sand, and collapsed. She drew her hands to her chest slowly, gasped for breath. Ellie stood nearby, knife still in hand, and stared. 

Torn. 

It’d be so easy. Flip her over, kneel on her arm, and push the knife into her throat. Not fast, just push, feel it break the skin, watch the panic and the pain flash through Abby’s eyes.

Ellie didn’t movie. 

Abby coughed, wheezed, dragged herself to her knees. She looked up at the house; it fully burned down, the roof had caught and the shooting had largely stopped.  
Ellie watched as Abby looked to Lev, and then stumbled forward, clawed at the sand and then the pole and dragged herself upright. She grabbed the rope, untied it, drew Lev down gently, released him, pulled the small man into her arms. 

“Hey,” she pleaded with Lev, her voice broken and hoarse. “Hey kid, wake up.”

Lev just groaned. 

Abby rallied herself, cradled Lev in her arms, and stood up. She turned to Ellie. 

If there was some reaction, Ellie didn’t see it. 

“They’ve got a couple of boats, down this way.” Abby carried Lev away. 

And Ellie followed. 

Abby was unsteady on her feet. She swayed, but her grip around Lev never faltered. 

Near the path Ellie had taken from the big house, a burst of gunfire cut through the night. A couple of birds nearby took flight, but Ellie didn’t have it in her to flinch. 

She followed Abby.

They came to a small berm, a deep cut of sand had been washed out of the path and Abby set Lev down on his back, mantled up next to him, and picked him up once more. 

Ellie was slow, getting her leg up, dragging herself over the lip, getting back to her feet. 

She still held the knife. 

She stumbled, went to a knee, struggled to catch her breath. Her backpack cut into her shoulders, the weight of her supplies dragged her down. The gun, light enough in her hands to sprint with, now felt like an anchor.  
She got up, followed the path. 

It turned, broadened out, the path faded with a shallow shoreline. A narrow wooden pier started in the dunes, and moved out into the water. Two shallow water boats sat, tied up to the dock. 

Abby was already down by the water. She waded in without hesitation, slogged her way towards the closest boat. 

She screamed, a gunshot burst to Ellie’s left, and Abby twisted, fell forward into the water. For a heartbeat, both she and Lev were underwater. 

Ellie looked, saw a limping man, blood dark and shiny in the muddy moonlight, with a heavy revolver in his hand. Smoke wafted up from the barrel. He took a few steps forward. The whole right side of his face was a mess of cuts and gashes; he couldn’t see Ellie. 

He took a few halting steps forward, lowered the gun, and pulled the hammer back. 

Abby cried out, with one arm, dragged Lev into the boat. 

“Please,” she held her hand out. “There’s two boats, you don’t have to do this—“

He fired again, the round missed Abby but drove into the outboard, inches from Lev’s head. 

Ellie unfroze, found herself barreling forward, jumped at the man, drove the knife into the side of his neck and used her momentum to topple him over. He fell, hard, and she shoved the blade out forward. 

More gunfire barked from up the trail behind her, she turned, saw only two more men, carrying bags, but only one had a pistol. 

The closest kicked sand at Ellie, it got in her eyes, she yelled and tried to clear them, when in the sudden dark a closed fist landed on her head.  
Her mind went fuzzy, another hit landed on her side, and drove the wind from her lungs. She raked the back of her hand across her face, pried her eyes open long enough to see her attacker lift another hand, and in it was a rock.  
Ellie twisted, jabbed the knife up into him as close as she could, she cut his shirt and opened his chest, he recoiled, screamed. 

She shook her head hard, and as he fell back, she chased after him, stabbed straight out, punched into his gut—

Killing him blurred for her, there was just movement and rage and screaming and her hands were hot and wet and sticky, she heard another shot, and screaming behind her. 

The last cultist beat Abby down with the butt of his gun, pushed her face down into the water, and then knelt on the back of her neck.  
Ellie’s heart stopped. That was the closure she’d sought, that was everything, his killing Abby, and he was stealing it from her! 

Ellie staggered forward, folded her knife into her pocket as a reflex, and pulled the gun off the sling on her bag. The gunman looked, snapped a shot at her, she didn’t flinch. Abby struggled up, got her head above water briefly, reached out with a single hand, before the gunman surged forward, and shoved Abby bodily under—

Ellie put the gun to her shoulder, a memory flashed, she shook her head, she had to act, had to move—

The memory pushed to the fore of her mind and she couldn’t ignore it—

She shouldered the rifle, blinked, aimed the way Joel taught her, and fired. The gun coughed, the rounds stitched up the man’s torso, and he toppled off, backwards, into the ocean. 

He floated on his back. 

Abby pushed upwards, coughed mightily, heaved for breath. 

She clawed her way up the side of the boat, checked Lev, leaned over him, barely able to stand, to make sure he was okay. 

Ellie knelt in the sand, remembering. A cold night in Jackson, clear skies overhead, Joel playing quietly on the porch, the look on his face as Ellie approached. 

She almost hadn’t gone. But after everything else, she didn’t want this to be another wedge. There had been enough of those. 

He stopped playing so suddenly, the searching longing in his eyes had been so hard to not see, Ellie had looked away. The space between them was fragile, and he didn’t want to break it, so he was cautious, gentle, he tried—

Abby’s hand lingered on the side of Lev’s face, and her shoulder slumped, her breathing calmed a little. 

Ellie looked at the ground, unmoored, confused, empty and broken and overwhelmed all at once. 

Something splashed, and when Ellie glanced up, Abby was nowhere to be seen. Ellie stood up. Had she fallen? Ripples moved out from the water near where Abby had stood. 

Ellie grabbed the bag of supplies by the body, and rushed forward towards the ocean. She heaved the bag and the gun into the boat, fell to her knees in the water, searched for Abby, found the mass of her, pulled her upright.  
Abby coughed, Ellie grabbed her arm and dragged her half upright, pulled her forward towards the next, working boat, bodily eased Abby into the boat. 

Ellie limped back for Lev, carried him to the working boat, then moved the gun and the bag of supplies. She cut the broken boat loose from the pier, and then clambered into the one working boat. It fired on the second pull, and she untied, pushed off with her foot. 

Lev groaned, reached bloodied and scarred hands up to his face, and rubbed his eyes. He looked around slowly, looked at the prone, wounded, Abby, and then up at Ellie. 

He stared, wide-eyed, at her. 

“Is there a place I can take her?” Ellie asked.

“We were going to cross the water, and see the remaining Fireflies.”

“Fireflies are gone,” Ellie said. 

“We contacted them on a radio! Before we were stolen.”

“I don’t know how to get there.”

Lev looked out across the water, unsure, and then back at the shore. “That way.”

Ellie followed his directions. They wound up beached a few miles south, in a narrow cove with rough water on either side of the steep, rocky cliffs. A narrow path ran up to the forest beyond. But the beach was shielded, dry, and there was a substantial cave. 

There, they made camp. 

There, Ellie saved Abby’s life. 

There, Ellie sat in the dim, damp cave, looking at the unconscious Abby and Lev, sleeping close together, and wept.

**Author's Note:**

> More is coming, and soon. I don't have an exact upload schedule. But soon, i pinky promise.


End file.
